¹⁶“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. ¹⁷Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. ¹⁸On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. ¹⁹But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, ²⁰for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

       ²¹“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. ²²You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. ²³When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes. (NIV11)

I’ve never understood—or at least could never relate to—people finding things like horror movies and haunted houses appealing. I guess I’ve just always felt that there are enough real things in the world to frighten me that it doesn’t make sense to seek out even more reasons to feel fear.

Much of the culture around Halloween, of course, has to do with scary things, people, and creatures. So it always made me happy that we had something else on October 31 that gave us a reason to celebrate instead —Reformation Day.

But today’s readings remind us that the Reformation and our continuing mission of witness and confession have some scary things, too. Daniel was not afraid of the lions in their den, but they were still frightening creatures. Luther stood courageously for the gospel and on the Word of God against the forces of the pope and the emperor, but those men still had the power, inclination, personnel, and weapons to do him great harm.

And Jesus says outright in our Gospel today that he’s sending his disciples out “like sheep among wolves”. That’s not a picture of peaceful coexistence; it’s an expectation of hostility and danger. 

And though Jesus spoke these words to his disciples then, they still apply to his disciples today. We are the sheep. That’s not just because we belong to Christ, the Good Shepherd; it’s also because the gospel, which is about mercy, peace, and love, makes us look like easy prey for the wolves of the world.

So who are the wolves? Jesus doesn’t leave his disciples wondering. 

The wolves that relate most closely to the Reformation we might call “powers”. They are kings, governors, councils, and others who have the ability to order trials, arrests, and floggings—even executions. God blessed Martin Luther with his local ruler’s support, so his ordeal started right at the top: he was called before the Holy Roman Emperor at Worms to defend his teachings—and ended up being declared an outlaw when he refused to recant. 

You and I, in present-day America, aren’t likely to end up charged as criminals simply for sharing the gospel of salvation by grace or for teaching the Bible, but Christians are increasingly encountering friction when doing these things—which means that opportunities to be Christ’s witnesses before today’s “governors”, “kings”, and “Gentiles” are also increasing.

Luther was threatened by another “power” because of his work. The Papacy and the Roman Catholic Church were the medieval equivalent of the chief priests and Pharisees who ran the councils and synagogues at Jesus’ time, and they recognized early on that preaching salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, founded on the Scriptures alone would disrupt their power and income. Those wolves were eager to eliminate Luther and those who joined him.

Now, we heirs of the Reformation don’t have quite the same threats to deal with today, but there are still wolves in the church that harass or attack Christ’s sheep. False teachers aren’t usually content just to have their errors tolerated; they want to silence or shame those who dare to correct or expose them—or who even just stand up and speak the truth. 

Yet the wolves Jesus warns us about are not all “out there”; they are also right next to us. The “everyone” that will hate his disciples is not just the culture but includes friends, peers, and neighbors. Even scarier—and sadder—is that some of the worst wolves will be the sheep’s own family members: brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters. Most of us here today have been blessed to not have to experience anything like this, but there are Christians around the world today whose lives are in danger—especially in Muslim and communist countries—from family members or neighbors who don’t like their confession of Christ.

So we know there are wolves all around us. They don’t want good things for us. Maybe they want to separate us from Jesus, or maybe they just want to take advantage of us or get us out of their way, but they’re dangerous—ravenous, even. Yet this isn’t a horror story; we’re not afraid.

In the first and most important place, we’re not afraid because Jesus took away the thing that is most frightening, most dreadful, and most serious: the just and righteous wrath of God against sin and sinners. That is the thing that terrified Martin Luther as a monk, and what was often used by the medieval church as a tool to control and manipulate the people.

And it was and is a real thing, even if it seems to have gone out of fashion to talk about the reality of sin and its consequences. God is very clear in Scripture that doing what we want instead of what he wills is rebellion, no matter how “small” a thing we might think it is or how justified we think we are in doing it. And there’s a price: “the wages of sin is death”. That’s not just physical death, either—it’s damnation to hell: eternal torment and separation from the love of God because of our disobedience.

The Pharisees and others of Jesus’ enemies taught that the way to avoid God’s judgment on sin was to obey the Law of Moses … and all sorts of other rules that they had added on. One of the reasons that they hated Jesus so much, and that the disciples he was sending out were going to face opposition from them, was that his message contradicted their teaching—and with that, threatened their influence and power over the people.

Things were similar with the church in Luther’s day. Their advice to anyone whose conscience was weighed down with guilt over his or her sins was to do more—try harder to obey the commandments, go to more masses, say more prayers, make more offerings, and buy indulgences to get themselves or others out of purgatory. Luther tried all that, and it didn’t work—it never could. His conscience remained guilty.

It wasn’t until his studies in the Scriptures—which likely involved the passage from Romans we read earlier—let the Holy Spirit break through the lies he had been taught that, finally, he saw what had been hidden for so long: Christ had already done everything, for everyone, to pay the price of sin and to provide the righteousness God requires for heaven. It wasn’t a matter of sinners having to do something to be saved; it was all about believing—trusting the grace that led the Father to send his Son, who willingly suffered and died on the cross, then rose again. He did it all to deliver us from sin, death, and hell and give us perfection, peace, and a place in paradise, forever.

That’s what the Reformation was and is all about: recovering and rejoicing in the glorious truth of our salvation by grace through faith in Jesus, just as the Bible teaches. And when you and I put our trust in Christ, we have everything he came to give us. Our sins of laziness and lust, of rage and rebellion, of selfishness and self-abuse, of arrogance and adultery, of gossip and lies and deceit, of idolizing things and people instead of worshipping God alone—they are all forgiven, washed away by the blood Christ shed on the cross. And in their place we receive his perfection: the Father looks at us and sees his Son’s righteousness, not our sin. And now heaven is our home.

So no wolf can threaten us with the consequences of our sins, because those have all been canceled at the cross. That’s the gospel. No matter what accusations they might throw at us, we’re not scared.

But we are also prepared. Jesus tells us how. First, he tells his disciples to be “shrewd as snakes”. We’re used to connecting serpents with evil or danger, but here he wants us only to consider how a snake behaves when it is threatened: it doesn’t seek out confrontation, but makes sure it’s ready to do what needs to be done. Wisdom might mean it withdraws or hides itself, or it might mean that it moves forward. It acts shrewdly.

But at the same time, Jesus says, we are to be “as innocent as doves”. No matter what the wolves threaten or attack us with, we don’t match evil for evil. We don’t let fear or anger or any other emotion lead us into sin or lead us away from faith in our Savior.

These are not traits for Christ’s sheep to turn on only when there’s immediate danger—they’re to be part of our always-on Christian character. And those qualities will help us with what Jesus says next: “Be on your guard.” His disciples don’t go through life imagining that nothing bad will ever happen when they share the gospel and teach his truth; they stay alert and watch for danger.

But that’s still no reason to give in to fear. Jesus says that even when the wolves arrest us, we don’t have to worry about what to say or how to say it. He will equip us.

You see, Christ’s disciples—we sheep—have something the enemies of the gospel will never have: the Holy Spirit, sent by our Father in heaven. His witnesses don’t have to worry about what to say when they’re put on the spot for their confession of Christ, because when they speak it will be the Spirit speaking through them.

What a comfort this must have been to Luther and his fellow reformers! Whether speaking before the emperor, debating the truths of Scripture with the pope’s chosen champions, or presenting the Augsburg Confession, they knew that they could trust that the Holy Spirit was active in them, knew exactly what to say, and would enable them to say it and write it.

Now, you and I aren’t likely to end up being asked by an emperor to recant Scripture’s teaching or condemned by a church council for holding to salvation by grace without any works of our own, but Christ’s assurances here still matter. On any day any of us might be challenged about why we won’t work or go to a game when we’ve got church, might have it suggested that our opinions or our political positions are simply expressions of selfishness, resentment, or greed when they are actually rooted in Scripture, or might straight out be asked the reason for the hope that we have. And we won’t have to be worried about what to say: the Lord has prepared us, equipped us, and given us the Spirit who will speak through us. We can answer boldly. We have everything we need and nothing to fear.

And it makes sense, if you think about it, that we would be given all those advantages when we go out among the wolves, because the mission we have is not our own but Christ’s. We are his witnesses—it is his salvation that we are sharing with our neighbors and the nations.

Jesus has given his church a mission, and since we know the gospel so well, we are particularly well-motivated and well-equipped to share it with other sinners who need to hear it. Fulfilling that mission includes the things we do together as a church and synod like congregational outreach programs, sending missionaries overseas, and planting new churches in the US, but it also includes our individual witnessing to the people God places in our lives.

And here’s one of the great things about this mission we have: finishing it is not our concern; we only need to be faithful. Jesus told his disciples that they wouldn’t finish their mission before he finished his. And that is fine with us. He’s in charge, and he will return at just the right time. We just want to make sure that when he comes, he finds us doing what he’s given us to do.

So we persevere. We keep going with the gospel. And when our reliance on the Word of God is challenged or threatened, we stand firm, to the end. We cannot entertain or envision any other option. Like Luther before the emperor at Worms we say, “Here I stand.” We can do nothing else.

We can be so bold because we’re not afraid of the big bad wolves. We can even be thankful for them, in a way, because without their threats we might end up as lazy, faithless sheep.

But we also know the wolves’ secret: They are afraid. That’s why they attack. In some cases, it’s because they want to strike at our Shepherd, in other cases because they recognize that the message we carry is their undoing. The gospel has power they cannot defeat.

Even the biggest, baddest wolf of all, Satan, the “old evil foe”, knows this. As Luther wrote and we just sang, “this world’s prince …can harm us none. He’s judged; the deed is done; one little word can fell him”: the word of the gospel, the name of Jesus, who defeated him at the cross.

Dear sheep, don’t be afraid of the wolves. Our God is a mighty fortress. Let the wolves be afraid of your Shepherd. Amen.